Portal de Cartagena

www.portaldecartagena.com

• Home
• Business
• Hotels
• Restaurants
• News
• Advertisement

The president of the Community, Ramón Luis Valcárcel, said Cartagena establish "an ambitious and dramatic dialogue between history and art, with the recovery of archaeological remains of the Roman amphitheater for incorporation into the entire Museum of Contemporary Art in Cartagena .

Valcárcel chaired today the signing of the constitution of the Roman Amphitheater Foundation Museum of Contemporary Art in the Region of Murcia, which is responsible for the management of this cultural project.

The Foundation has a board chaired by the regional chief executive and composed of representatives of the City of Cartagena, with its mayor, Pilar Barreiro, as vice president, and the Community.

In the first session yesterday, according to the president, José Vicente Albaladejo was named manager of the Foundation.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, whose works are already underway, involves the direct intervention on the remains of the Roman amphitheater, in addition to activating a system of complementary uses and activities that will make the new museum complex privileged meeting place for the city's cultural Cartagena.

The overall budget for the construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art is 22 million euros, of which have already invested a million euros this year and two million more are planned for 2009.

The whole project of the museum, whose works for the recovery of the remains of the Roman amphitheater has already started and go at a good pace, will be presented at the prestigious ARCO Contemporary Art Fair, held annually in Madrid in early February, as one of the stars of regional government projects for this term.

The design of this new and unique cultural space by architect Andrés Cánovas, conceived not only as a group of showrooms, but as a set of cultural services.

For this reason, in addition to the exhibition halls, will feature educational cabinets, conference room, book shop, library, cafeteria and restaurant, as well as audio-visual rooms.

Adjunctive use, and after rehabilitation of the ancient Roman amphitheater bleachers, provides for the construction of an auditorium discovered, which have a maximum capacity of 1,200 locations and will accommodate all types of shows, without affecting the whole of historic remains .

All this activity will be supplemented with an interpretation center of the archaeological remains of the amphitheater, located inside the rings plaza, though, as the technicians in charge of the project, all of these uses are subject to the final result of the excavations and work conservation.

Source: CARM